Wilmer Flores Swaps Tears for Cheers With Walk-Off Home Run

Wilmer Flores was greeted by teammates Friday night after his game-winning home run beat the Washington Nationals. Flores also drove in the Mets other run.CreditMike Stobe/Getty Images

By Rob Harms

Aug. 1, 2015

It was around 11 p.m. Friday when Terry Collins predicted the future.

Collins, the Mets’ manager, approached the bench coach, Bob Geren, in the bottom of the 12th inning of the Mets’ important, emphatic 2-1 win over the Washington Nationals at Citi Field. The game was tied at 1-1, and the Mets were about to bat. Collins told Geren that someone was going to hit a home run that inning.

“When the ball left the bat,” Collins said after the game, “I said, ‘And it had to be him.’ ”

He was, of course, referring to second baseman Wilmer Flores, who had just hit his first career walk-off home run and drove in both runs to power the Mets’ win. Flores — who two nights ago cried on the field during the Mets’ loss to the Padres because he thought he had been traded — said he did not remember what he was thinking as he rounded the bases.

“We’re going to sit here tomorrow and be saying the same thing: What did we see last night?” Collins said.

“Can it happen at a better time to a better person in a bigger situation than that?” he continued. “It’s unbelievable.”

Flores’s home run and the win were critical, as the Mets now trail the Nationals by two games in the National League East. “That’s one of the best walk-off homers I’ve ever seen, considering everything,” Michael Cuddyer said.

Before the game, rap music thumped loudly from Curtis Granderson’s locker, and Granderson seemed very happy. It was, he said, “a feel-good Friday.”

Indeed, the Mets had reasons to feel good, even before Flores’s home run.

Their ace, Matt Harvey, was set to take the mound. Their promising catcher, Travis d’Arnaud, had been activated from the disabled list and was scheduled to start for the first time since June 20. Their captain and leader, David Wright, said he could play in a minor league game next week as he continued to rehabilitate from spinal stenosis.

Then, at 3:27 p.m., a phone rang inside the clubhouse. “Uh-oh,” Granderson said. “We’ve got a trade!” Baseball’s nonwaiver trade deadline was Friday at 4 p.m., and Granderson was joking that the Mets were making a last-minute move in plain view of reporters in the clubhouse.

Granderson’s quip turned out to be prophetic. At 3:47 p.m., the Mets completed a trade for Tigers outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, a 29-year-old power hitter who could help ignite the Mets’ offense, one of the poorest in baseball.

One Mets fan taped Cespedes’s name and number, written in blue marker, onto a No. 5 Wright jersey. Another fan walking around Citi Field shouted, “A Cespedes for the rest of us,” a nod to the comedian (and ardent Mets fan) Jerry Seinfeld’s post on Twitter after the Mets had completed the deal.

The Mets followed up with Friday’s critical win against a team that has largely mystified them, especially at home. Entering Friday, the Mets were 4-6 against the Nationals this season, and Washington was 27-6 at Citi Field over the past four seasons.

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Matt Harvey kept the Mets close by striking out nine and allowing one run and five hits while pitching into the eighth inning.CreditMike Stobe/Getty Images

So when Harvey retired the first three batters, it was a promising start. The second batter, Yunel Escobar, hit a sharp ground ball to second base, and Flores dived to his left and threw to first for the out. The crowd exploded and gave him a standing ovation.

In the fourth inning, the cheers were even louder. Flores hit a two-out, run-scoring single, and the Mets were up by 1-0. They could have added to that lead, but Eric Campbell struck out looking with a full count and the bases loaded to end the inning, flipping his bat in frustration.

Harvey, meanwhile, kept cruising. He carried a perfect game into the sixth inning and gave up one run and five hits with nine strikeouts in seven and two-thirds innings. He was helped by the defense, too: Flores’s play in the first, Juan Uribe’s leaping snare of a line drive in the third, Granderson’s sliding grab in the fourth and Juan Lagares’s running catch to end the seventh.

After Harvey — who, entering Friday, was 3-2 with a 1.34 E.R.A. in seven starts against the Nationals — induced Ian Desmond into a groundout to end the fifth inning, he marched off the mound with a stern expression that gave the impression he understood the magnitude of the series.

Flores, it seemed, understood it as well. As he approached home plate after hitting the home run, Flores threw his helmet into the infield grass, pounded his chest twice and jumped into a horde of cheering teammates as the stadium erupted in celebration.

“They support me 100 percent,” Flores said, “and I’m with them, too.”

How much can change in two days.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Flores Swaps Tears for Cheers With Walk-Off Home Run. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe